New iPad - how much storage?

[Farrgazer]

Years ago, I used to have an iPad 4 64GB, but never filled it to the brim with apps or documents. I don’t remember exactly how much I filled it up, but I never saw a low space warning when I had it. It was used for taking notes, gaming and general reading.

I will get a new iPad sometime later this year, and I’m thinking about which storage size to get. I know I want to get the 12.9”, But the storage tier has a very big gap - 64GB vs 256GB.

I intend to do a lot of reading and taking notes with this iPad. The reading material will be PDF, ePub, doc, and whatever other formats there are out there - research papers, reports, news articles, books, whatever. I am also entertaining the idea of carrying part of my music collection on this iPad because my phone doesn’t have a lot of storage. While I will play games, I will be catching up on past purchases rather than buying new games.

So, what storage size should I get?

 

[Starfia]

Reading material usually doesn't take up too much space (unless it's made of images or bogged down with them). I've juggled music, games, video, and more on my original 32GB iPad Pro and got by with the willingness to manage them now and then – I think you'll be fine with 64GB; consider the extra cost if you really want the luxury of not worrying about space for ages.

(And if you keep your music in iTunes, you could always spend money on Apple Music or iTunes Match to get cloud-based access to it from your phone and your iPad.)

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I have a 64 GB iPhone 6 with 41 GB Available and a 128 GB first-gen iPad Pro 12.9" with 102 GB Available. The trick in both cases is that I'm using iCloud extensively - iCloud Photo Library with Optimize Storage turned on. iCloud Drive behaves similarly - infrequently-accessed items are automatically removed from my devices, awaiting re-download as needed. I also manually delete iBooks items and re-download if needed. I had iTunes Match (and now Apple Music), so even my personal music is cloud-parked. My "A-list" music is downloaded to my devices, I'll stream it if wi-fi connected, and if I'm going on an extended journey away from wi-fi I'll download a bunch more before I go.

Depending on how much stuff you have, you may be able to get away with the 50 GB storage plan ($0.99/month USD). I can't - I'm using a bit more than half of a 200 GB plan ($2.99 USD), and since there's enough space, I'm sharing that plan with several family members.

Of course, if you're cloud-averse, this won't work, and you'll need more local storage. All I know is, I'll confidently be buying the 64 GB iPhone X when the time comes, saving me $149 over the 256 GB model. At $2.99/month, that's 50 months of the 200 GB storage plan just for the new iPhone alone. When you consider it is spread over several devices... no brainer, since I'm comfy using the cloud.